Reasons and Cliff Faces
by Scarabbug
Summary: Michael has separation issues while KITT and Shawn try to put an end to the drugs run of the millennium the only way the Knight Rider knows how. [Set postKnight Rider 2000. One shot].


**Spoilers:** For the _Knight Rider 2000_ movie… I don't know if it's a part of continuity any longer what with the new series coming out soon, but what the heck.

**Writer's Note**: There were a lot of untied ends with this movie, I thought, so here I am, doing what I do reasonably well and trying to fill some of them in. Also, I miss Michael. That kinda has something to do with it.

* * *

Reasons and Cliff Faces. 

It's… different to the way they used to be. KITT and him.

'KITT, distance reading!'

'…'

'No, no, damn it! They're too far away, they… okay, fine; we'll try it my way anyway.'

'..'

'Course you are, you always are, just trust me on this one.'

'…'

'See? I knew you did. It's not asking much! We have to catch them up somehow, right?'

'…'

'Right.'

_She's_ different to how he remembers her too, from the little time they had to get to know each other. She's had something of a… Michael wouldn't call it a change of _personality_ exactly, just an advancement of a personality that was probably already there buried under all the old betrayals and bullets. The fiery spirit that a gunshot to the brain had knocked out of her a few years ago has resurfaced with a vengeance. There's also something of KITT'S bluntness in her eyes and something of his sense of humour on her tongue, darting at Michael every opportunity she gets. When she smiles, its how he imagines KITT would smile if he could.

Which is strange. It's not the driver's-influence effect Michael is more familiar with –not that little bit of obscure programming Bonnie installed that makes KITT adapt to the personality and thoughts of the driver he carried so as to best serve their purpose. In fact, if he had to hazard a guess, he'd say KITT and Shawn were deliberately clashing in several key areas where Michael's fairly sure they should've agreed. Still, it doesn't appear to affect their work.

After a while, Michael realises what it is: The chip. It's something to do with the chip. Torn out of KITT'S circuitry and refitted into Shawn's brain. Michael won't pretend to ever fully understand how it works or why, but it does.

Boy does it work.

Shawn's hands are tight against the steering wheel, but her hand isn't hovering close to MANUAL OVERRIDE the way Michael knows his would have been (just a precaution, KITT likes his control) back when he'd been the one in the driving seat. Maybe it doesn't have to be. Maybe Shawn could make KITT stop just by saying it in her mind. Maybe KITT could do the same to her (which is kind of a disturbing thought so Michael doesn't devote much attention to it. He knows all he thinks he needs to know about the connection between KITT and his new driver and what he doesn't know, he'll quiz them about later). The scrubland whips past all around them, making tumbleweeds out of ragged shrubs and sandstorms out of plumes of dust. KITT'S speedometer is up to two-fifty, but the sandy surface of the "road" isn't allowing them any further traction. This is as fast as they go. It's not fast enough. It can't be fast enough.

KITT isn't talking right now, except that he _is_, he just isn't bantering vocally the way he (should) always did with Michael. The argument Shawn is having appears to be entirely with herself, but it's not. KITT's just speaking right through her, making the banter seem one sided. Shawn clearly hasn't mastered the fine art of talking inside of her head the way KITT has.

'We need more speed, KITT, think you can do that?'

_'…'_

'No, it'll take them too long to get here there's no point'

_'…'_

'KITT, I checked the chronometer when you did, believe me, I know my timing.'

_'…'_

'I never said you didn't, I… No, no, it's okay, I'm handling it. How's your…'

_'…'_

'Oh, damn. Nothing at all? You're totally getting a full diagnostic and recharge as soon as we get home.'

_'…'_

'Thought you'd like that. Okay, plan b…'

_'…'_

'Yes, I'm still making plan B up as I go, we always make plan B up as we go!'

_'…'_

Another pause and Shawn blinks, her expression trembling from turbulence, and looks at him when KITT "says" something Michael can only guess at. 'You're serious! KITT, are you trying to impress your former driver with your newly developed sense of caution or something? I swear that part of you has absolutely nothing to do with me.'

When KITT says next, he says aloud for Michael's benefit. _'I don't doubt it. And anyway, he was_ always _impressed. He knows my capabilities. Speaking of which, Michael, do me a favour and inform the reckless individual in my driver's seat that when I say _"Turbo Boost"_ isn't working, I really do mean it isn't working. Far be it for me to accept limits but these circumstances are far from ordinary, I'm carrying more weight than usual and there's no—'_

'KITT,' Shawn snaps before Michael can open his mouth, or even think about trying to get a word in edgeways. 'We're going over the cliff edge and that's final. We build up speed, we make the jump to the other side, we catch the bad guys and get the heck back to base. Simple.'

_'That it would be if that jump were possible.' _

'Well if you have a better idea then I'd like to hear it. There are enough narcotics on that truck to buy the entire playboy company and kill everyone at five thousand high school proms and we're not letting them get away.'

KITT is uncharacteristically silent for a moment.

_'Understood. Though I do have one better idea, actually_ –call for backup _for once, Shawn. I repeat that this is sheer insanity. Michael, tell her that… Wait, why on earth am I asking you this?' _

Now they want his attention. 'Hey, I didn't _ask_ to be here, buddy.'

'Then by all means, get out of the car,' Shawn mutters. 'But sorry –I can't exactly slow down for you right now.'

Michael knows she's still a little pissed off at him for just up and hopping in KITT when he "was just passing and recognized the licence plate" at a local gas station. She's also not entirely happy about his presence here in general. It's not that Shawn dislikes him or anything (considering), but she seems to have inherited KITT's pedantic tastes in security and safety. Plus, this was supposed to be their mission. Emphasis on the _her_ and _KITT_, and Michael…

He technically counts as a civilian right now. She doesn't need civilians along for the ride. Especially not when the ride in question is a rush towards the gaping chasm that separates them from the drug runners currently making a beeline for the horizon.

There are, actually, moments when Michael feels he's really getting too old for this, but they _are_ only ever moments. Still…

Shawn shifts the gears again. Or maybe it's KITT doing the shifting. Michael's pretty sure that it was never this hard to understand with him. It was always obvious which of them was making the choices. But Shawn and KITT don't banter the way he and KITT used to: they don't chitchat, they reflect. The information bounces back and fourth between them, channelled and controlled be it internally or externally. Not an argument so much as a heated exchange of information between driver and car. Sometimes it's hard to work out where Shawn ends and KITT begins.

They've… changed.

'Just do it, KITT! For me?'

_'God, I must be delirious if that's actually working.' _

Michael… shifts without meaning to. Because… That tone of voice, that attitude, isn't so much the KITT he remembers. It is, but it isn't. There's something of Shawn in it. He looks at the panel flashing to his left. 'KITT'S right, you know, the turbo boost isn't working.'

'Oh, of course,' Shawn scowls, 'you'll take his side.'

'Hey I'm just stating a fact, says here that it's offline and I've seen KITT fail jumps of lower height than that–' he points into the distant overhang which is looking a lot more distant now than it was ten seconds ago. 'Even with it. This is not a good idea, Shawn.'

_'You were supposed to be convincing her of the inanity of this action, not bruising my ego.'_ KITT sounds affronted. Michael resists the urge to say that, when it comes to KITT, there's no difference. Five years ago he wouldn't have hesitated. Now he does. It's as if he can't say it anymore.

'KITT,' Shawn's voice is a half laugh. 'With you there's no difference.'

_'The same could be said of you and Cassius Clay in several less obvious respects, Shawn, but you don't see me drawing attention to it.' _

'Did you say Cassius Clay? Great, the car's a comedian. Why didn't you warn me about that, eh, Knight?'

The car.

Shawn never calls KITT _her_ car, as far as Michael is aware (not that he'd know). Not out loud. But he notices it anyway, the singular almost constant message transmitting back and fourth so powerfully between car and woman, woman and car, he can almost see it. _'_Mine_.'_ It's…

It's bizarre.

Or maybe it's just irritating. Or confusing. Or all of the above.

_'And the driver is crazy so I suppose it works out.'_ Michael doesn't know why KITT has chosen to start speaking aloud again, but he has. Maybe it's for Michael's benefit. Maybe he wants to remind him of…

Remind him of what? Things that can't change? Adventures that are over? Michael missed this. He still misses it now, even from the passenger seat.

'Tell me something I don't know, KITT,' Shawn says in a clipped voice.

_'Approach distance six hundred metres and falling, impact in one hundred-eighty seconds.' _

'I do know that.'

Michael weighs up the last-minute options just the way he used to. Wonders if KITT still has that emergency-breaking air-bag system. Probably, so there's still time to stop should any of them actually come up with a better plan than just charging over the cliff, hoping they cam make the fifteen metre leap without turbo boost and—

And then the ground jolts. The earth shifts abruptly under them, and KITT loses at least thirty kph in the landing. Michael nearly loses his vision altogether but manages –barely– to keep his face from impacting against the front windshield. Another thing he'd forgotten about being in KITT was the feeling that the whole damn planet was trying to shake you off whenever they did hit something which actually made an impact on his internal dampeners.

'Whoa, what the—!'

_'Dip in the road followed by an uneven dune surface. I didn't scan for it. Are you two alright?' _

'Urgh. Fine, fine…'

_'I did say this was a bad idea.' _

'Ah, Shawn? I'm thinking you should listen to your car on this one.'

It takes Michael less than a second to register what he says. The fact that he just called KITT Shawn's car. The slip doesn't appear to register on either Shawn or the AI. She appears to be arguing with KITT silently again, and while Michael can only imagine what both of them are thinking at each other, he knows it's probably a pretty good guess.

'No. If they change their route they could get over the border into Mexico, we can't take the chance. We stop them and their little drug's shipment now. And like I said, Mister Knight, nobody told you to get in the car.'

'I was in town.'

'In town. Sure. At a gas station miles from anywhere?'

'They do a cheap service?'

'You didn't even have your car. Or your wallet, far as I could tell.'

She could tell? '…That would correspond with my needing cheap gas.'

_'Cheap?'_ KITT sounds as affronted as he always did by the idea of low-cost fuels. _'Michael, it's just as well I don't run on petroleum fuel judging by those prices.'_

'Well you let me in!'

_'Probably not the best idea I've ever had. Now the chances are there'll be a tally of at least three lost members of Knight Industries to be dealt with in paperwork tomorrow. Or rather one: You'll be counted as a civilian without birth records and_ I'll _probably be written off as scrap metal again.' _

Shawn groans. 'Come on KITT; think positive, we can do this!'

_'Turn around and I might consider that. If by "we can do this" you mean "we can survive, complete the mission and allow me to as you say, burn rubber on some actual tarmac as opposed to all this sand… oh, and the cliff face. There's that to take into account, as well".' _

Michael frowns. 'When did you get so morbid, anyway?'

_'Since we started charging at a cliff I would be incapable of clearing safely even if my turbo boost weren't currently rendered inactive, with drug runners on our trail half a mile back with what seemed to be cannon-strength missiles and a truck in front of us carrying a fortune's worth in illegal substances bound for the coast, that's when,'_ KITT says, though Michael thinks that what he really wants to say is "since I staring sharing my head space with Shawn". Watching someone get their brains blown out via a memory implant… can't be a good thing. Michael's seen enough shootings himself to know.

'You sure about this, Shawn?' he suggests, though he knows that if this had been fifteen years ago and he'd been the one in the driver's seat, he wouldn't have listened to anyone asking the question anymore than Shawn listens to him now.

She pushes down on the gears and just _grins_ like nothing can stop her. Michael's been out of this business for just long enough to have forgotten how the adrenaline feels. Feeling it again now, remembering it, is like meeting up with a long lost friend.

'I'm not going to take advice from you on safe driving, Knight!' Shawn yells. 'I bet you did this a thousand times behind the wheel.'

'Yeah, but I usually at least tended to weigh up my options on a scenario first. You know, balance the outcomes of success against the odds that we were doing something very, very stupid.'

'.And then you just jumped right in and did it anyway?'

'…KITT?'

_'Yes, Michael?'_

'Stop telling her those stories.'

_'Make me. Impact in fifty seconds. Do you wish to start lying to each other yet?' _

'What?' Shawn frowns.

'It's a long story,' Michael says. Well, it's too long to go into right now, anyway. Maybe he'll get the chance to tell her later.

_'Impact in thirty seconds. Twenty nine… twenty eight… twenty seven… twenty six…' _

The word friend mixes in with a thousand other messages. These messages are constructed in single word, unspoken sentences, like betrayal. Mistrust. Forgotten. Anger. Longer phrases, _you left, quit, not even a message, not even a word, didn't say goodbye, you came back, you expect things are different? I had reasons, they'll never be the same, you hurt me, went to hell after we broke up, like scrap metal, get a life, got one, and a body too, bad joke, bad insult, almost back to normal, right? But it's never going to be normal again, right? Right?_

And somewhere in amongst all of that are the words. _'I forgive you,'_ and _'it wasn't your fault. Not entirely.' _

There's nothing else to say which isn't just dredging up the past.

_'Twenty four… twenty three… Shawn?... Twenty one…' _

The look in Shawn's eyes is familiar, determined and righteous, all things Michael recognizes but has never seen in someone else's face all at the same time before.

In a dashboard, maybe, but…

'C'mon partner,' Shawn says at last, still smiling. 'Scared I'll dent your paintwork?'

_'Not that I ever thought I'd say it, but my paintwork is the least of our worries. And anyway, where have I heard that before? Six… five… four…'_

Michael keeps his mouth firmly shut.

There's no turbo boost, but they fly anyway, and Michael has to admit, going over a jump this way feels a little different from the passenger's seat.

**_Fin_.

* * *

**

_"I accept chaos. I am not sure whether it accepts me. I know some people are terrified of the bomb. But then some people are terrified to be seen carrying a modern screen magazine. Experience teaches us that silence terrifies people the most."  
- Bon Dylan._


End file.
